At the Gate of Samaria

by William John Locke

“What do you mean?” he asked, catching a glimpse of her face in the swift gleam of a gas-lamp. She was smiling, in good humour.

“Oh! if you are mystified, so much the better,” she exclaimed, “It will be my little revenge.”

And that was all the explanation she vouchsafed him.

However, that drive spun a thread of intimacy between them. There are few conditions of companionship so favourable as those in a hansom cab. The driver is practically non-existent; the three sides and roof of the vehicle form a temporary home, a chez soi. The outside world lies in front of one, very near, and yet one is out of it. Even the desolate squares, with their occasional lamps blinking through the mist, and their wet, sooty trees rustling reluctantly as the wind passes through them, and their gaunt houses, each grimly and jealously guarding its household, giving the sense of the awful isolation of souls, fail to depress as they invariably depress the sensitive pedestrian. There is again the cheerful rattle which precludes sustained conversation, but encourages disjointed, intimate talk. The rush of the air, the whirling past of figures and objects, is exhilarating even in the vilest of weather and in the dreariest of neighbourhoods. The rapid night glimpses, too, of coffee-stalls, their lamps glaring upon the surrounding idlers; public houses, with the sudden babel of voices issuing from an opened door; walkers of the pavement forlornly standing with white, indistinguishable faces, 'buses steaming and labouring with their somnolent fares; every 'bus-load the counterpart of the last; swifter still, the glimpses of the occupants of other cabs that pass, stimulating the imagination; a phantasmagoria of life, almost unreal, yet bringing into play some of the lighter elemental forces of nature.

Clytie was almost sorry when the cab stopped at the familiar side-door next to the shop where the legend of “Gurkins, green-grocer,” was dimly visible through the gloom. Much of the mere woman in her had risen to the surface, obscuring the artist, the hater of formulas, the restless seeker after the mysteries of life. She had felt childish, frivolous, thus appearing in a new light to Kent, not without a certain charm, although he wondered to himself whether she, after all, was not like the rest of womankind—“fundamentally silly.” This was a famous dictum of his.

But when the door closed behind them, and the narrow, ill-lighted, close-smelling passage leading to the gloomy staircase struck upon her senses, the realities of life came sharply before her, and her usual independence of thought and action reasserted itself. Otherwise, when she had said good-night to Kent on the landing and had found her room in darkness, she would not have called him back to light her lamp for her, and, that done, have asked him to remain for a short chat. He was struck by the change to her usual frank tones, and seeking half unconsciously for a reason, attributed his late impression to an illusion on his part caused by the darkness and dispelled by the light, by which he could see her face.

“You smoke, I know,” she said, throwing her wraps on to the sofa. “You must be dying for some tobacco. What do you smoke?”

“Oh! a pipe,” he replied with much fervour, instantly seeking for it in his pocket.

Clytie turned to poke the fire. It was black and sulky, and her efforts were of not much avail.

“Let me try,” said Kent, bending down with her on the hearthrug; “this is a thing not generally known.”